# Reasons it’s Awesome to be Paralysed (DON’T LISTEN IF EASILY OFFENDED)

- Show: [Stillness in the Storms](https://stillnessinthestorms.com/), a podcast with Steven Webb
- Episode: 49
- Published: 10 January 2021
- Length: 22:45 (about 23 minutes)
- Subject: Steven's Story
- Web page: https://stillnessinthestorms.com/episode/7-reasons-its-awesome-to-be-paralysed-dont-listen-if-easily-offended
- Listen: [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reasons-its-awesome-to-be-paralysed-dont-listen-if/id1467889656?i=1000504879329), [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/5Q4LN7Ev2CwTMzxj8jlFmN), [MP3](https://podcasts.captivate.fm/media/8e97987b-57a5-4c3b-b5ed-50ae19a589b0/https-3a-2f-2fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl-cloudfront-net-2fstaging-2f2021-0.mp3)

Can there be anything good about being paralysed? Seven things, and I am only half joking about most of them.

Reframing is one of the most useful skills we have. It does not delete the bad. It makes it liveable. So: I do not get the aches from sitting still that my incomplete friends get. I do not do the housework. I get the comfortable seat at the cinema while everybody else chews their knees. Anything I do at all gets treated as impressive, so I can fail badly and still be fine. Some of it is genuinely not a bonus. Carers in your home is not a bonus.

**One thing to try:** Take one hard thing in your life and find one real gift inside it. Not a silver lining. A gift.

## In this episode

- (2:41) Why reframing matters more than positivity
- (5:44) Number one, and it is about aching
- (7:30) If somebody tied my legs up I would not know
- (8:47) I do not do the dusting
- (11:16) People compare me anyway, so surprise them
- (12:34) I can tell a disabled joke
- (14:08) Pendennis Castle and the grass
- (16:26) The part that is honestly not a bonus
- (20:17) Reframing does not remove the bad. It makes it liveable

Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: [stevenwebb.uk](https://stevenwebb.uk)

Thank you for listening.

Steven

## The question this answers

Can there be anything good about being paralysed?

Seven things, and I am only half joking about most of them. The title tells you not to listen if you are easily offended, and I meant it.

## The heart of it

- Reframing does not delete the bad thing. It makes it liveable, which is a different and more useful job.
- Humour is one of the load bearing walls of being human. We built it for exactly this.
- Life is not fair. Accepting that early frees up an enormous amount of energy.

Zeno was a merchant whose ship went down with everything on it. Somebody in Athens told him how unfortunate that was, and he said, not really, I am in Athens. He wandered into a bookshop, found some philosophy, and went on to start Stoicism.

So, my seven.

One, I do not get the aches from sitting still all day. My friends on the spinal unit with incomplete injuries genuinely suffered with that. Mine sends nothing back, which has its uses.

Two, I have not hoovered a floor in thirty years.

Three, and this one is real. Expectations of me are lower. Anything I manage gets treated as impressive, which means I can fail badly and be fine. I do not think that is good for a person. It is still true.

Four, I can tell a disabled joke and get away with it, which is more than most people can.

Five, I am disabled enough to get proper support. My government gets plenty wrong and there is a great deal more to be done. Appreciating what exists is not the same as settling for it.

Six, I never queue and I always get the good seat. At the primary school quiz everybody else is chewing their knees on a chair built for a five year old, and I am in a heated chair with fans in it.

Seven, and the genuine superpower. I can have a drink in the night without getting out of bed.

And one that people assume is a bonus and is not. Having carers is not a bonus. You would not choose to have other adults in your home who are not your partner, and nothing in your life is private. I appreciate mine enormously. It is not a perk.

## One small thing to try

Take the thing about your life you keep listing as a disadvantage, and write down two ways it has actually helped you.

Not to pretend it is a gift. To stop it being the only lens.

> Life is not fair.

That is the first line of The Road Less Travelled and it is the most freeing sentence in it. You were never going to get an even split. Once you stop waiting for one, you can get on.

## Questions people ask

### Is this making light of a serious thing?

Yes, deliberately. Humour is one of the things that lets people carry what they have to carry, and the alternative is a list of what I cannot do that gets longer every year.

### Does reframing make the difficulty go away?

Not one bit. It does not remove anything. It makes it possible to live alongside, and that is all I have ever claimed for it.

### Should I be offended?

Possibly. The title warns you. I still laugh at the word nipples at fifty, in council meetings, silently, hoping nobody notices.

## Transcript

[0:02] Hey, and welcome. So this week I'm recording the podcast a little bit different. I'm going to do it for a YouTube video as well. So if you want to watch it on YouTube, you can check out Stephen Webb on YouTube and there'll be a link underneath the podcast. And also, yeah, that's it, really. Just doing a little bit different. Just trying to put it out. So it just. It doesn't just go out on the podcast, it also goes out on YouTube. So you can see me. You can see me in all my glory, sitting there with my headphones on and the microphone. So, yeah, this week we're talking about the seven awesome things about being paralyzed. And one of the things I like to do is reframe things in life, reframe when things happen to us.

[0:50] And I'll be reading this week about the lives of the Stoics, a book by Ryan Holiday. And in that, the very first Stoic, apparently there was Zeno, and he was. Him and his family were merchants and they had a boat. And if I were. If I recall, the boat sank and they lost all their goods and everything. And then when he was over in Athens, somebody said to him, that's really unfortunate. He said, well, not really. I'm in Athens, aren't I? And that looked like a great opportunity to him. Then he happened to stumble across a library where someone was reading some wisdom, and he got really into Stoicism and ended up one of the first teachers. And apparently where he used to teach is like the Painted Porch, as known as.

[1:41] And I cannot remember the Italian name for it, but in the Painted Porch, the remnants of it is still there now, actually, which is just incredible. I had to look it up on Google when I read it to see if I could see a picture of it. Just how awesome is that? How amazing. Our history at two and a half thousand years ago, nearly about two and a thousand years ago. But yeah, he reframed things the way we look at things. And if we look at it as bad luck, then it will always be bad luck. It'll always be a bad thing. But if we just change the way we see it and there's positives in everything, and I believe in finding the gift. And no matter what happens, there's always a gift. Just sometimes we gotta look a little closer, dig a little deeper, wait a little bit of time.

[2:33] But there's always, always a gift. But yeah, I'm Stephen Webb, and this is the podcast Stillness in the Storms. And I help people just to see things a little bit different. Find that little bit of calmness when you don't have it. And I really do believe in reframing things is one of the most important skills we have. And I think it was Wayne Dyer that says if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. And I think that's really important. So. So yeah, this week we're talking about the seven awesome things about being severely paralyzed. And my regular listeners would know, I'm paralyzed just below my neck. I cannot feel anything from my nipples down. Yeah, I said nipples.

[3:21] Get over it. We're all children at heart. I don't know why I still gotta laugh when people say words like that. I've still gotta laugh at it. I can't help it. It's just the way it is. I'm a city councillor and when people say stuff in council meetings, I'm like giggling inside and I'm like, I hope no one can notice. But hey, that's the way it is. We're all children. We shouldn't grow up too quick. We should bring that childness. Or childness, is that the right word? We should bring that, that softness of the way we see things to our adulthood a little more. Have a little more fun with it. But anyway, going back to the podcast, what's it about this week? Yes, it's about reframing things.

[4:12] Just before we get on to that, if you could, if you're watching on YouTube, hit the subscribe. That would be awesome and amazing. One of my goals this year is to have a thousand YouTube subscribers. And if you're listening to podcast on iOS or Apple or anything like that, leave a review. That'd be amazing. So that would be incredible. It doesn't have to be a positive review. It doesn't have to be just an honest review. You know, if there's something I could be doing better, let me know. If there's something I. If there's something I'm doing. All of them. Yeah, please tell me that as well. We all like a little bit of flattery sometimes. But yeah, I broke my neck or nearly 30 years ago now, and that's left me paralyzed.

[4:59] I use an electric wheelchair and I have 24 hour care. I have people helping me to do almost everything. You know, there's many things I cannot do. I cannot bathe myself, I cannot wash. I cannot. Can I even go to a toilet by myself, for Christ's sake? Don't even get that peace and quiet. But the thing is, we cannot. We can either focus on the things that we Cannot do. Or we focus on the things we can do. And I'm. People look at me as an optimist and I wouldn't say I'm so much as an optimist, but I'm just like in the middle where, you know, the glass, not glass is not half full or half empty. You got a glass, you're missing the point. It's refillable, you know, go and fill it up yourself. I think I've done a podcast about that.

[5:50] It's your glass, fill it with what you want. But yeah, let's get on with the seven awesome things about being paralyzed. So number one, not feeling my body and some of the aches and pains. Well, I don't feel my hands really, I don't feel anything below my nipples as I said in the intro. And so I'm sat here all day in my electric wheelchair and I lie in the same position overnight. And if you think about it, the amount of time when you sit in the same position, how much it must ache, how much it must hurt. And I remember on the spinal unit I had several friends that were incomplete. And the difference between complete and incomplete spinal injuries is when you complete, that means no information is passed in that part of the spinal cord.

[6:43] So that's a two way thing. You get no feeling back. So your muscles and your joints and everything, there's no feedback to the brain, the brain doesn't know it's hurting. And also the brain isn't able to tell it what to do either. So one thing you cannot move and two, you cannot feel. Whereas if you're incomplete, you get some feeling or you may have some feeling or you may have some movement, you may have what's called proprioception, where you know where your body's to without looking. Because if you think about it, if you move your foot with your eyes closed, you kind of know where your foot's to, you know whether it's bent up or your toes are curled down. Whereas I don't.

[7:31] You know, if I close my eyes and someone plays a trick and they tie my legs up, I left my eyes and go, oh, who did that? I wouldn't know. So that's one of the. So, so it's a bonus. I, I don't get the aches and pains and like I said, my friends on the spinal unit, they used to really suffer sometimes. And I, I'm just wondering whether to tell you this or not. I'll stuff it, I'll tell you anyway, I, I go toilet for a convine. It's like a condom, but it's sticky, so they stick it on in the morning and, and it sticks like anything. Well, imagine putting that off. Oh, that's a gift. I cannot feel that. And not everybody pulls it off the same way.

[8:23] I can't believe I'm sharing that. But it's too late now. It's in number two. I don't have to do the housework or any kind of mundane task like that. Yeah, I haven't hoovered the floor for 30 years. Nearly 30 years. I've made my bed. I haven't. Well, if that's a bad thing, really, we should make our own beds. But I don't have to. I don't have to do any of the housework or the dusting or the cleaning and get on with the things I enjoy in life. Reading books and watching Netflix and doing my podcast, stuff like that. Don't forget to leave a review. All the hard work. I'm skipping to do this podcast. So, yeah, I don't have to do the boring stuff like put the bins out.

[9:13] So that's, that's a major bonus. Number three. This is quite an important one actually. People's expectations of BE are lower and, and I think we all do that if someone cannot walk or someone cannot do anything or their chips are down. In life where somebody may look at my position and go, do you know what? Everything he does is, you know, pretty damn good. Whereas if I was able bodied, they would expect more of me. Whereas if I just do the slightly better than normal, I'm like, oh, he's awesome. Well, that's the way I feel like anyway sometimes. So the expectations are primarily lower of me if I literally spent my life sat down, watching Netflix, doing very little, spending some days in bed and just not really doing anything more than just doing that with my life and smiling, happy, just always been polite and happy with everybody.

[10:23] They go, he's awesome, he's cool. You know, he's an inspiration because he's quite happy. So I think the expectations of when you're severely paralyzed or when you've got something really wrong compared to normal, I think the expectations are considerably lower. I think that's for sure. So that's a bonus. You know, whatever I do do is looked at as pretty cool. So I can fail badly and I'm okay. You know, I don't even have to go and get a job if I don't want to. I can just do nothing. And that's okay. I don't think it's okay. Personally for ourselves. And in my last podcast, I spoke about it and you know, look, take a measurement of where you're 2. Do the best with what you got.

[11:11] You know, don't compare yourself to others, which is what I was doing then on number three. But people do that anyway. They are going to compare me to other people. So at least, at least when I achieve something, it's like a. Whoa, that's a surprise. Number four. Number four, I can tell a disabled joke. Oh, I'm so tempted to tell a couple of disabled jokes right now. But in this, in this time of woke and, you know, whatever culture we're in, I don't know if I should publicly, I'll probably. It would either go viral for the wrong reasons or viral for the right reasons. And I'm not sure which is virtuous and acceptable. So I'm going to.

[12:04] I will tell you one thing, and I think this is okay, but. And it was because I used to call myself it, but so my daughter calls me Wait for it. And I've got a cape and I do go out late at night and I roam the streets and. And she calls me Smackman. Come on. I hope you're laughing because at this point, if I'm the only one laughing, the world's in trouble. Yes. I've got my gold cape and I go out and I'm spag man. Yeah. I can't do music. Yeah, come on. Hopefully you're laughing. Hopefully. Hopefully you're not offended.

[12:50] It's. It's a joke. It's just fun. But I have some fun in life. Number five, swiftly moving on. I'm disabled enough to get support and get a good amount of support, then this is, this is quite serious, actually. I, I live in a country where, although my government can be a bit of at times and current, especially the current government, the, you know, violating human rights laws for disabled and everything like that, and there's so much improvement and they're doing so much wrong. I am fully disabled for these. I am disabled enough that I do get quite a bit of support and I'm lucky for that.

[13:38] So I think it's something that on. On one side there's always more can be done on the other side appreciate what is done. It doesn't mean we should settle, but it does mean we can appreciate. So, number six, I don't have to queue for concerts and I typically always get the good seats. That's definitely. Well, most of the time we were going to a concert. It's a pendennis Castle going to see Westlife and my daughter, me, my daughter and my partner at the time, her mum was walking across the grass and she looked up and goes, you've got to go and sit with all the disabled people. And she was only young.

[14:26] My daughter's awesome. I'm really painting her in a bad picture now, but I'm not. She's. She's awesome. She's so amazing. And I said, hey, you got to come and sit there with us. And I think she appreciated it because the soon as the warm up act went off stage and the Westlife come up themselves, everybody started standing up and it meant she wouldn't have been able to see. So she could sit on my lap and she could stand on the back of the chair and she could see brilliantly. And we had the great seats. And also talking about seats, I've got a comfortable wheelchair seat. So, like when we go to like local quizzes or when we go to anything really, whether it's a pub or we go to some kind of charity do, a local school, especially the primary school, everybody else gets to sit on these little seats that their knees are virtually.

[15:23] They're chewing on their knees nearly because they're sitting on a seat that's made for like 5 year olds. Whereas I've got my nice comfortable seat and okay, I look like I'm the only adult in the room where everybody else sat down on lower seats, but I'd still get the comfortable seat and it's heated and it's got air fans and it's all awesome. So. And I've just had. We just fundraised for a new one because it's broken down a little bit at the back. So perfect opportunity to say thank you to everybody. Now, 2021 taught me a lot, really, about asking for help and people willing to help if only you would ask for them. That's a different podcast altogether. And just before I go on to the last one, which is the most awesome one of all, it's the most awesome superpower that I think we have is, I want to say, one that I did not put in the seven and that is having stuff done for me.

[16:27] It's not really a bonus having stuff done for me. People often think when you've got carers that do the housework and do stuff for you and all that, well, I would rather do it all myself because no one will do it the way you do it. And that's whether you're cooking or whether you're. And right down to like sorting my Sides out and putting my clothes on and getting them straight and all that. My carer is doing a phenomenal job. Don't get me wrong, I don't look too bad today. If you're watching on YouTube sometimes the jump is on backwards, sometimes my trousers are on my head. That's. That's part of the course, I suppose. Joking. They're never quite that bad. They're just backwards sometimes.

[17:14] Not the carers, the clothes. Oh, I'm gonna so get lynch for this podcast, don't I? Oh I know I am. Just forgive me. Okay. But yeah, I did not put it in because often people think and I, I had certainly with like the authorities at times where people well you've got carers, you know, that must be good. Well, it's not good. You wouldn't choose to have them in your home. You wouldn't choose to have other adults in your home that isn't your partner, isn't person you're in love with. It's not easy for care has been in a home where there's a partner and a daughter and things like that and a family and trying to fit in and we have stuff in private.

[18:02] You know, I can't open my post in people. I can but then becomes a pain because at some point he's fighting away and all those other things. So really and, and like phones, you know, it's really hard to have a conversation with people around all the time and so it's very little private. So it's not great having carers but I do appreciate my carers deeply. Set number 10, drum roll. I'll add some music in a minute in post production or whatever it's called. I'll add some countdown music. Number seven and really the number one superpower. I've been severely paralyzed. I can go for a pee in the middle of the night without getting out of bed.

[18:53] How cool is that? Every able bodied person right here now is like ah, I, I wish I could do that so I can literally go to bed, I can have a cup of tea and then the carer. So right now I have another cup of tea and I can have my water. I could wake up in the night and down a cup of water and don't have to worry about it. Sorted. Yeah, I don't have to get out of bed to go for a pee in the middle of the night. Amazing. How cool is that? So yeah, there's my seven awesome things. I've been severely paralyzed. Here's the thing. I know this podcast is a bit of A joke and bit of a laugh and we've had some fun along the way.

[19:44] But if you do look at your life and you look at the things that you cannot do or that set you at a disadvantage or whatever, and you focus on the constant things that are bad about it, your life will feel bad, your life will feel miserable. You know, I lost my job and I can't do this. Or this person can do this and this person can do that. If I was taller, if I was slimmer, if I was so, you know, just reframe these things. Reframe what's happened to you. And by reframing and finding the gift in doesn't mean it takes away all the bad. Not at all. It just makes things easier to live with.

[20:32] Because life is not fair. You know, that's the first line in the Road Less Traveled by Tom Pack. Life is not fair. You know, as soon as we accept that, as soon as we accept that we're not going to be given exactly the good and bad and even kill, we can start to focus on the good, focus on the positive side of things, and have a laugh with the things when they go wrong. You know, one of the greatest things about being a human is I develop evolved sense of humor, as much as it is terrible and I still laugh at the word nipples.

[21:23] And as much as we say in private and tell jokes that we probably shouldn't tell, it is one of the fundamental keystones that helps humans cope with life. And I think, I think we need to embrace that a little more. So that's my podcast. I'm Stephen Webb, the host of Stillness in the Storms. And if you're watching this on YouTube, tap the subscribe and do something with a bell. I don't know what you do with it. You have to click on it and find out. Don't miss a video. And if you listen to this on Spotify or itunes or something, subscribe or do whatever needs to be done on there so you don't miss any more.

[22:12] My 50th episode's coming up next and I try to release a video every video and episode every Friday, 11am Help you to reframe your life a little bit, have a little more inner peace. Take care, guys, and have an amazing week. Namaste.

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